HAMADRYAD

Allright, you guys! Are you up for a brand new update on the construcion of the house???

* cheer, cheer and the crowd goes wild *

 

As I was allready stating in my last message: it was a loooong winter… so don’t expect any miracles…

Before I can start carpenting the wooden skeleton, I had to make a central support for the roof. At first my architect wasn’t really fond of the central support as he wanted to keep the main area open… But I convinced him it would have some advantages:

- A central support makes building the skeleton allot easier. It also allows reparations to go easier and faster (for instance when a tree falls on the roof and breaks some beams).

- I integrated the chimney inside the central support, so my fireplace will be in the center of the house, which is not only pleasant when you are sitting around it with friends, but is also better for the heat-distribution (certainly because I will use a stove working on radiation heat)

- A massive concrete beam is not only a durable solution, it also contributes to the thermal mass of the building. Especially because it will receive heat from the massive stamped earthen floor in front of it.

- And finally the central support can be considered as an “archetypic” (does this word exist in english?) element in the house: When you take a look at big Mongolian yurts, old indian settlements or some african huts who were supported by a main vertical beam. And in most of those traditional ‘houses’ the fireplace is at the center of the place. I’m also planing to make this chimney-support a real piece of art! Sculptures all around… I’m really looking forward to that!

Some pictures and explanations:

As you can see there are some rebars sticking out of the concrete box. These rebars are necessary because the chimney will have to carry a huge load of the green roof. And it will ave to resist windloads on the roof. The rebars were connected every 30 -to 40 cm with a horizontal “ring” to avoid them bending outward.

 

To keep the rebars at the right distance and position I made a wooden mould and pulled the rebars into place using a rope. Oohyeah! Everytime I needed to add a new rebar to lengthen an existing one, I  overlapped them by 40cm’s.

 

As you can see on this picture I created an opening on this side of the chimney. This opening will be running up to about 1m80.. this is the exact height of the stove I’ll be using. Inside the opening I’ll put water hoses that will be jamed between the chimney and the stove and will (hopefully) heat up water in winter. If it isn’t clear now, it will get clear later on…

You can also see how I used double insulated INOX tubes for the smoke-canal … The piece which is included here, is a T-piece. Normally it’s not used this way… but you guys know I don’t like “normal”, hehe,  so I turned it 90 degrees. Why? Well normally the T-piece is used laying down… one tube going up to the chimney, one tube connected to the stove and one tube going down for the removal of ashes. In my case it didn’t seem wise to remove the ashes from underneath the chimney, this is why I have a tube going up to the chimney, another one going to the stove and the one that’s normally facing down, I directed it horizontally… This way I can clean the chimney on the other side of the chimney in stead of underneath it. It also allows me to place a stove on the other side of the chimney if I would like to… more possibilities!

I used PVC-tubes to make a circular mould around the INOX pipes… I was planing to pull them out afterwards, but they seemed to be totally stucked in the concrete…

To make the chimney I couldn’t make a mould all the way up and poor it right away… when concrete falls from a height of more than 70cm’s it starts to de-mingle (again: is this a word in english?? well. you get the point )

So everytime I got 60cm high, I let it dry for some days and put up the new mould on top of it, overlapping about 10cm to the existing concrete block.

When an INOX smoke-canal gets warm it expands … this is why you need to use a double insulated pipe. Their are two main drawbacks when using double insulated tubes:

1. They are sooooo expensive!

2. When you pour concrete around the pipe and something goes wrong in due time, you won’t be able to replace it and you are stuck with a broken chimney.

So what did I do about it? I put up a single insulated pipe all the way up to the roof. And I insulated it myself. To do this I had to put a PVC tube around the INOX pipe and pour around it. When the concrete was half-dry, I pulled out the PVC tube, creating a  concrete canal which I filled up with insulation material. I could leave the PVC-tube inside the chimney and use a new one for every pour, but that would just be a waste of materials.. Pulling out the tube wasn’t easy… It was impossible by man-power… even not with two men… so I had to be creative. I drilled two holes through the top of the PVC-pipe and put a rope through it, making a loop. I put a horizontal beam throught the loop and let it rest on my ladder (as you can see on the picture above). Putting all of my weight on the other side of the beam, the tube slowly started to rise out of the concrete block.

At this stage it was prutty easy, but it became REALLY difficult going up… I found myself hanging a few meters above ground on the horizontal beam to get the tube out. Most of the time this happened when it was allready dark and sometimes even when it was storming… but it sure was fun!

This is Troy and me getting ready to put up the next mould!

 The most difficult mould to make and get up there!

I want to thank Troy and Bert for doing a great job on the mould and helping me to put it up there!

 

TROY, WOLF, FREEBIRD !!!

 And the result:

** To view an overview of all building steps up-till now you can go here: House

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 8:27 am and is filed under Building the house. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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